3 Ways To Make Your Webinars More Interactive

I am a fan of face-to-face learning experiences. When a facilitator is in the same room with me, I am more likely to be fully engaged and on-task. But there are times when a webinar is a reasonable replacement for classroom training. Yet, webinars have a reputation for low engagement rates and retention. Here are three ideas that I frequently build into my webinars to increase interactions with participants.


1. Ask participants to grab a piece of paper and keep it nearby throughout the webinar. After your introduction, direct everyone to begin a thinking map on their paper so that they can actively capture key ideas and map out how they are related to each other. You can model this on the screen, and return to it several times throughout the webinar.

2. Add an interesting photo, related to the content, and ask participants to chat in a caption. This gets everyone’s creative juices flowing and often adds a bit of humor. Depending on the webinar platform you are using, you can also have participants vote for their favorite caption.

3. Place two photos, side by side, on a single slide, labeled A and B. Ask participants to look at the photos and notice similarities and differences. As they chat in their observations, ask follow-up questions that will take their thinking to a deeper level.

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